Week 4 – Colour Theory – Savannah’s Blog

Exercise 1:

Using one of your thumbnails from previous weeks use one of the four colour
schemes outlined to colour a simple environment

MONOCHROMATIC (No cheating – No B+W)
ANALOGOUS
COMPLEMENTARY
TRIADIC

Monochromatic

I felt going for a monochromatic palette would be the easiest and quickest to get started with. I chose my favourite thumbnail from last week’s homework and decided to apply a green monochromatic palette to it. Since my group’s idea for this environment was a magical-esque, radioactive cave environment I felt using green would work here.

I also decided to use another one of my thumbnails from last week and apply a blue monochromatic colour scheme to it. For this one, I used desaturated shades of blue to show the apocalyptic and desolate nature of the ruined city. I also wanted to convey a melancholic, calm atmosphere, since cities are typically busy and now only nature inhabits it.

Exercise 2:

Use colour to portray the following landscape in two different emotions
(e.g. hope, fury, sadness, happiness, wonder, whimsical etc…. )

The lineart provided for this exercise:

Fear/Danger

Warmth/Hope

I was listening to this Nintendo Evening music compilation while colouring, so it ended up being the basis/influence for this one.

The video is copyrighted now 🙁

Colour Scripts

Uses variations of the colours pink and purple to convey the ethereal and fantasy nature of the holographic woman talking to the main character, K. Purple also often conveys extravagance which is fitting for the nature and appearance of the hologram. In the context of the film, the director uses pinks and purples to represent K’s romantic interests and also provides a fantastical contrast between the orange monochromatic palettes as well as the blues of the other scenes in Blade Runner.

The use of muted, desaturated cool colours in this scene conveys the nature of the environment as well as the mood to the audience. Cool colours are used to show the cold, snowy and empty environment, the lack of colour contrast and these dull colours also emphasis the bleak nature of what’s happening in this scene, the main character Thorfinn is repeatedly defeated and put down by Askeladd despite trying to go all out. Thorfinn is desperate to prove himself and defeat him to avenge his father but no matter what he does, he is unable to.

In this scene from the first season of Netflix’s Castlevania, monochromatic blues are used to showcase Dracula’s despair and sorrow after coming home from travelling (on request from his wife to reconnect with his humanity) to find his wife’s lab destroyed by the church for witchcraft. He soon finds out that his wife has been taken by church officials and is pretty much guaranteed to be dead.

As the scene progresses and Dracula becomes filled with rage at trying to become more like mankind, who his wife cared about as she was a doctor, when they would easily kill his wife without a care, shades of red start to bleed in from the bottom of the screen as his anger grows. In this particular screenshot, an analogous colour scheme is used. A lot of red is used throughout the show, both to showcase anger but a lot of times it is used to create fear, mayhem, unease and destruction.